Ducks, eagles, and dolphins have all been the beneficiaries of 3-D printed prostheses, and now Japanese artist Aki Inomata is using the power of rapid prototyping to enhance the appearance of the humble hermit crab. Using a high accuracy 3-D printer, Inomata created a series of crystalline shells that put the skylines of New York, Thailand, and Greece on the backs of the ocean’s most famous homebodies.

Inomata’s walking sculptures feel like something you’d see in a dream or a Hayao Miyazaki movie, but were actually inspired by a mundane real-estate transaction. The governments of France and Japan had been negotiating over rights to an embassy and came to a compromise where control would change hands every 50 years. This got Inomata thinking about ownership, nationality, and migration in an increasingly globalized world and spurred her to capture the ideas as an artwork, with the hermit crab acting as her muse.

“In Japanese language, hermit crabs are called ‘Yadokari’, which literally means somebody living in a temporal place,” she says. “Though the body of the hermit crab is the same, its appearance changes completely according to the shell it is wearing. It’s as if they were asking, ‘Who are you?’”

Despite the curb appeal of her creations, getting the hermit crabs to inhabit the stylish shells required clever urban planning from Inomata. “At first I thought hermit crabs could fit into any shape of shelter, since I knew that some hermit crabs choose lids of mineral water bottles,” she says. “However, it wasn’t so at all. I tried several but they didn’t pay attention.” Some of the prints were too heavy while others were too small or large. After becoming frustrated by trying to adjust the shell sizes manually, she used a CT scanner to capture a highly detailed, 3-D scan of the interior of an unoccupied snail shell that one of the crabs had been using. With the tomography in hand, she resized the file and satisfied the soft-shelled house hunters.

“Whether it is acquiring a new nationality, immigrating, or relocating, I worked on this project with a notion of whether we can really choose the place or country to live,” says Inomata. Photo: Aki Inomata

Inomata has no plans to mass produce her products, but anyone willing to shell out some serious sunken treasure can get a limited edition, 3-D printed shell at the Ai Kowada Gallery in Tokyo.